Steve Sailer deserves credit
for coining the term "Riordanism," as apt a description of the
latest Republican electoral strategy as any. Riordanism holds that if
Republicans find beating Democrats difficult, the answer is to nominate
candidates who essentially are Democrats themselves in terms of their
issue positions.

Riordan, seen here with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
in November 2001

Its namesake is of course the front-runner for the Republican gubernatorial
nomination in California, Richard Riordan. Republicans rarely become mayors
of large cities with diverse populations, yet Riordan was elected mayor
of Los Angeles twice without any prior experience in elective office.
He was a decent mayor, a respite from the loony leftism that has pervaded
the city's politics for decades even if he did not as aggressively push
some conservative urban policies as his New York counterpart Rudy Giuliani.
Riordan did preside over relative law and order in Los Angeles for eight
years without becoming as divisive a figure among his city's minority
communities as Giuliani. This has persuaded many battle-weary California
Republicans - not to mention a few Bush administration politicos in Washington
- that Riordan is the most electable GOP candidate for governor.

Yet on the issues, Riordan is virtually indistinguishable from Gov. Gray
Davis, the incumbent Democrat. A columnist for the Orange County Register
quoted him as saying that Californians are "under-taxed." He
has said he is open to civil unions and a moratorium on capital punishment,
while already supportive of abortion on demand, affirmative action, welfare
benefits for illegal immigrants, amnesty and gun control. This is on top
of repeatedly endorsing and financially contributing to Democratic candidates,
including a donation to Davis. The refrain is that while businessman Bill
Simon and Secretary of State Bill Jones may be more conservative and in
step with core GOP principles, Riordan is electable. (Peter Beinhart exhaustively
listed the virtues of Riordan as GOP nominee in a recent New Republic
article.)

Perhaps an even better example of Riordanism than Riordan himself is
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Riordan has at least always been
a Republican and, as voters are finding out due to Davis' attack ads,
was more conservative before it was politically opportune for him to move
left. Bloomberg was a lifelong liberal Democrat who switched to the Republican
Party only when it became clear that its less crowded primary field was
more likely to get him on the ballot as a mayoral candidate. Between 1990
and 2000, he reported $337,000 in campaign contributions to the FEC, of
which 91.5 percent went to Democrats. Bloomberg's donations helped reelect
Bill Clinton, underwrite Al Gore and defeat Alfonse D'Amato, New York's
last Republican US senator. While he gave $100,000 to the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee and $59,000
to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, he gave no money to corresponding
Republican committees. He even refused to say whether he voted for George
W. Bush or against Hillary Clinton in 2000.

Bloomberg

Despite a longtime Democratic affiliation, generous bankrolling of Democratic
candidates and liberal policy positions on a whole host of issues, Bloomberg
won the GOP nomination easily and was elected mayor with the support of
Giuliani and New York Gov. George Pataki. Now in office, he is filling
his administration with David Dinkins retreads.

The problem with Riordanism, principled objections aside, is that except
in cases where you are dealing with personally popular politicians, wealthy
people financing their own campaigns or media celebrities - your Bloombergs
and Riordans- it doesn't really work. These liberal Republicans still
lose elections. It should be fairly obvious why this is the case. While
swing voters are important because they need to be added to a candidate's
base unless that base is so large as to comprise a majority of the electorate
on its own, they are just a part of what it takes to win. Arithmetically,
without the base, winning swing voters is useless. If a candidate alienates
their own base, they must win progressively larger numbers of swing voters
to compensate, to the point where it often becomes quixotic.

Even some of the poster children of moderate Republicanism understand
this reality. Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld was widely celebrated
for his flamboyant social liberalism before he self-destructed in the
mid-90s. His outspoken support for legal abortion and gay rights did offer
some political benefits. First, it neutralized these controversial topics
and Democratic bogeymen like the religious right as issues in his gubernatorial
campaigns. Second, in 1990 it helped him put together an extremely unlikely
coalition against Democrat John Silber, whose gruff social conservatism
was off-putting to some suburban liberals. But his primary appeal was
always on the basis of conservative rather than liberal issues. Bill Weld
ran on a platform of tax cuts, crime control and welfare reform. He touted
balanced budgets and the death penalty. He was reelected with 71 percent
of the vote in 1994 largely because he delivered on his pledges of fiscal
conservatism and law and order, while Democrats in the legislature rebuffed
him on deeper tax cuts and capital punishment.

Riordan Republicans also like Rudy Giuliani, who endorsed such Democrats
as Mario Cuomo and disagreed with conservatives on issues ranging from
abortion and rent control to gay rights and gun control. Yet he too was
elected on such traditional Republican issues as law and order and opposition
to a bureaucratic city government. He fought the city's liberal leaders
on tax cuts, city spending and regulations. He cracked down on criminals
in the "ungovernable" city, cut welfare rolls and battled public
sector unions. The near universal adulation of Giuliani that followed
the September 11 attacks obscure scathing editorials in The New York
Times that labeled his budget cuts "civic Reaganism" (they
did not mean this as a compliment) and his feuds with such liberal activists
as Al Sharpton. Even Arlen Specter began his political career running
against liberals' approach to crime.

Notwithstanding opportunists who wish to revive liberal Republicanism,
members of the GOP's "progressive wing" are largely relics of
a bygone era. Jim Jeffords completed the transition many such Republicans
have made over the past 40 years by caucusing with Senate Democrats. Rhode
Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee is the son of John Chaffee, an old-line Rockefeller
Republican whose political career began in a pre-ideological and thus
pre-conservative GOP decades ago. It is also worth noting that Chaffee
and Jeffords hail from states where a Republican who wins statewide office
is atypical in any event.

Simply running Democrats willing to appear on the ballot with an "R"
next to their names is not a viable strategy for the GOP. Without its
base, the party's candidates can only win isolated elections. A recap:
Swing voters are what a candidate must add to their base in order to achieve
an electoral majority. Subtracting large portions of the base is every
bit as counterproductive as failing to win swing voters and perhaps more
so.

Political realists always point out that being principled doesn't get
a candidate or party very far if they fail to win elections. But it is
also true that winning elections doesn't accomplish very much if it doesn't
produce good results or advance the causes that a party believes in. Politics
is the art of the possible and compromise is often necessary. But compromise
is not the same as surrender. Grassroots Republicans will increasingly
begin to wonder if a victory by a professed Republican who believes in
most of the same things the Democrats do is in any meaningful sense a
Republican victory, while other voters will wonder why they should bother
to vote Republican rather than Democrat if the Democratic positions are
so wonderful.

If Republicans are serious about being a party that deserves to win elections,
they must do the hard work of convincing the American people that their
ideas about government are sound and conducting campaigns that will appeal
to voters. Simply saying "me too" didn't get Republicans very
far in the heyday of this country's postwar Democratic consensus and is
shamefully wasteful at a time when the party has gained in voter identification
surveys. More Republicans should be accused of Reaganism rather than Riordanism.